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Wednesday, August 03, 2005

A German man is cashing in on East German nostalgia for communism by selling exhaust fumes. No, really.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man has canned the noxious-smelling exhaust fumes of East Germany's cult Trabant car and is doing a brisk trade selling the scent to those nostalgic for the former Communist state.

"The smell is something very special and scarce nowadays," said Thorsten Jahn, whose cans of "Trabi" exhaust sell online for 3.98 euros (2.74 pounds).

[snip]

Fifteen years since reunification, nostalgia for East Germany has been running strong as rosy memories of the communist state's social safety nets, holiday camps and quaint consumer products like the tiny, box-like Trabants increasingly eclipse its negative aspects.

I wish I knew how many people were seriously feeling nostalgic and how many were just buying into a little snide humor to blow off steam, as it were. Making fun of an ugly part of your past is one thing. Making jokes when you're finding living on your own to be harder than you anticipated is healthy enough. But widespread polishing of a brutal past to make it look all nice and shiny would worry me some.